Corporate Wars Prologue: Tricking the Carpathian
Life, Crime
2000
28/5
28/5
Jonathan Lighten, a friend of Dr. Tafey's, comes to visit her and to play tourist in Metropolis over Memorial Day Weekend. Unfortunately, certain parties don't like his politics and hire an assassin to make an example of him.
Preliminary investigation after the event suggests that this attempted assassination hid some oddly specific business influences.
Complication #1 to the assassination attempt: The hit squad decides that their best attack opportunity will be at the Nicolaus Aquarium. The design of the open-air sections will limit sight lines, but also give the target fewer routes of quick escape.
Complication #2 to the assassination attempt: The five-foot tall, black-haired, retiring woman escorting Mr. Lighten is not, as anticipated, a Phoenix Industries administrative concierge. She is wearing a holograph-projection device that helps conceal her metahuman nature from casual observation, and otherwise keeping herself to the background, because Feral is the assigned bodyguard for this threatened VIP. She will remove the holograph-projection device at the first real sign of threat and pass it to her subject, who will then melt into the crowd of tourists.
Complication #3 to the assassination attempt: Today happens to be the day when a visiting party of foreign tourists from Transia have their pre-arranged tour of the Nicolaus Aquarium. At home, they are all of the law enforcement and civil defense that their people need. They certainly will not stand by while children are in danger!
Complication #4 to the assassination attempt: the Metropolis Police Department has a heightened response time today because of the diplomatic visitors. Who are definitely, visibly, proudly metahuman. To keep any potential incidents as even-keeled as possible, the officers assigned to be handy in case anything happens are in advanced training for modern meta policing. The new techniques in this training program were designed by Officer Triton from the established New York City Code Blue meta policing program; he is on site in the security office, chatting with Aquarium Security and making friends.
As the well-equipped but poorly-briefed hit team try to step up their efforts, Feral's reactions get more brutally definitive. She goes in very short order from disabling melee attackers and destroying their weapons to spinal damage on the fourth attacker and a pierced lung cavity on the fifth. She stares down the sixth, last man standing, silently daring him to fire at her again, when Metropolis PD arrives on the scene.
While the police are trying to figure out who, exactly, to arrest, the Wundagore Knights appear to hand over custody of the sniper team they had defeated -- a duo whose gear obviously matches Feral's opponents, plus have identifying data about their target. The police decide to move this entire mess into one of the employee-only areas of the Aquarium.
Feral's focus switches immediately to the handcuffs being prepared for all prisoners.
"Chains are bad," she says in a guttural voice. Her posture tenses to the point of faint tremors.
Officer Angel Brindisi hesitates for a moment, but then goes off-book to put his handcuffs away and gently talk the violent woman into stepping away from her recent opponents. He walks her into a meeting room away from the public where she can be interviewed.
In the ensuing police interrogation, Feral continues to be visibly ready for combat but trying to keep herself under wraps. Some questions get no response but a stare. Others get partial information. She gives her first name (Jarissa) only. She says she lives at a shelter for abused people like herself, and she won't tell them her last name or her address because some bad people are still trying to find their hidden victims. She says they'll have to kill her if they try to force her to turn over that information.
The police are completely taken aback by her expectation that they will hurt her over a name and address. Yet she is so obviously being plain-spoken and honest. She does not think the police are corrupt, or evil, or her enemy; she simply thinks they have power, and that she is denying something they want.
As information comes in from the hospital on the identities of her recent opponents, and a lawyer for Jonathan Lighten adds her client's statement on the day's events, Triton decides that this event was a clear-cut case of self-defense. He has Brindisi slip Feral a business card with Black Anvil's department phone number at Metropolis SCU. They release her from custody and turn their backs as she departs so that she will not feel like she is being traced back to her shelter.
Related Location
Metropolis
Related timelines & articles
Metropolis
Tales of Justice Timeline
Wyldfire Adventures (article)
Metropolis (article)
Tales of Justice is a work of pure, unabashed fiction. In fact, it considers itself rather heroic and quite proud of itself. Names of characters, places, events, organizations, and locations are creations of the author's imagination for this fictitious setting. Some have been inspired by other sources, which will be credited at the top right of the article.
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Original CSS "Comic" theme comes from Oneriwien but has been adapted/modified and expanded by Kummer Wolfe